Project Horseshoe: Making Games Art

In a story that feeds back to our earlier discussion on game designers who've been told to grow up, an elite gathering of game designers has tackled a related subject: growing up the games themselves.

Project Horseshoe is a super-small conference of around 50 developers who meet to solve game designs "toughest problems," and last November it was held for the third year in a row.

The topic? "The most over-analyzed, utterly cliche, pathetic, hopeless, but still highly-relevant problems in game design": How can games be promoted as art?

The full feature is lengthy and worth reading, but immediately touches upon some ideas related to journalist Heather Chaplin's admonishment of game designers' collective immaturity. The problem of public perception of gaming as an unworthy medium is a systemic one:

"Look no further than your local newspaper's coverage of games -- more than likely, you have to look to the Technology section, not the Art section. In some cases, you might find coverage of games in a more general Entertainment section next to reviews for toys, TV shows, and Stephen King novels, but here we see games considered only as consumable pastimes, not as a serious cultural form. Games rarely grace the pages of middle-brow or high-brow publications. ...

The first question to ask, of course, is 'Who cares?' Game designers already make good money just playing with play all day. Why be a prima donna whiner and blather about art? Do we really want game designers smashing their laptops on stage, slashing off their ears, or acting (even more) abusive at black tie galas?

The Horseshoe group believes that promoting games as art would ultimately make for a wider variety and greater depth of games. Games would have a cohesive polish and vision. Games could go beyond genres, appealing to a wider group that could explore new forms of play. They would have more significance to people, truly impacting more lives. And games would actually sell better and live longer lives because they'd be more essential to a wider swath of society."

My first reaction is to remember that not all artists behave poorly, and I wonder if it might be precisely that fantasy of the artist as empowered, gigantic child that keeps the people whose artistry creates games from being recognized as such.

The Project Horseshoe luminaries go on to examine their question in much greater detail, discussing the nature of what it means to be an artist who works on games, the nature of art, etc. It's useful and fascinating and probably controversial - and echoes Chaplin's more succinct sentiment at GDC last week.

Making Games Art: The Designers' Manifesto [Gamasutra]